Autonomous robots are robots which can perform desired tasks in unstructured environments without continuous human guidance. Many kinds of robots are autonomous to some degree. Different robots can be autonomous in different ways. An autonomous coverage robot traverses a work surface without continuous human guidance to perform one or more tasks. In the field of home, office and/or consumer-oriented robotics, mobile robots that perform household functions such as vacuum cleaning, floor washing, patrolling, lawn cutting and other such tasks have been widely adopted.
Navigation beacons are used to bound an area in which the robot operates. Bounding an area may be done, for example, to restrict a robot from entering or leaving an area. However, even when robots are restricted to a bounded area, it is often inconvenient to remove all items from an area in which the robot is performing tasks. It would be useful to have a way to deter a robot from entering a designated area within its bounded territory, in order to prevent the need to remove items that may suffer damage or otherwise not benefit from a physical impact with a robot.